1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system and a method of providing content for a mobile communication terminal, particularly, a method of efficiently providing large-size content by organizing content to be downloaded to a mobile communication terminal into a plurality of sub-content files and for managing efficiently the large size content in the mobile communication terminal.
2. Description of the Related Technology
Recently, the rapid development of Internet is enhancing access to various content data through the Internet.
The term “content” indicates various information or their contents, both are provided over the Internet, such as text, music, games, movies, and executable program of reproducing the above-mentioned content on a user terminal.
The content was downloaded through the landline Internet and played on desktop PCs or notebook computers in the past, however, since cellular phones or personal digital assistants (PDA) become popular nowadays, the needs to use content over mobile communication terminals increase more and more.
Currently, it becomes possible to provide several tens of mega-bytes to several giga-bytes content with ongoing advances in the technology of massive multimedia data transmission over the landline Internet and rapid performances of desktop PCs or notebook computers. However, in providing content to a mobile communication terminal, it is the fact that small-size content can be sent to the mobile communication terminal due to the limited memory volume, performance of the mobile communication terminal, and instability of wireless network.
Since small-size content used to be downloaded to the mobile communication terminal in the past, it was general to organize content for the mobile communication terminal as one file.
For example, in case of providing game content, execution data for using content and resource data for presenting characters or backgrounds, etc. were put into one file and then provided.
Recently, it becomes possible to expand memory capacity of the mobile communication terminal with external memory devices and to improve its processing performance, so that it allows to process large-size content in the mobile communication terminal. It is, however, still the fact that large-size content is being provided in one file.
But, there may be the following shortcomings when providing content in one file to the mobile communication terminal.
First, in case of large-size content, there may be various patch files after the first development of content, and when content is provided in one file, whole content has to be newly downloaded for downloading a relatively small-size patch file.
Second, in case of downloading whole content to download a small size patch files, it causes increased communication costs due to high volume of packet transmission through the network.
Third, in case of large size content, there may be an extension pack for expanding function. In this case, even if there are many consistent components between a basic pack of the content and the extension pack, whole extension pack has to be newly downloaded.
In addition, reproduction programs such as VOD player, DMB player, and MP3 player for mobile communication terminals have been included in an operating system when manufacturing a mobile communication terminal due to the performance of the terminal, however, it is possible to provide patch file for revising errors or extension pack for upgrading these programs through updating the terminal OS binary. But, since the performance of the terminal is increasing continuously and the limitation on the terminal storage is disappearing with external memory devices, the possibility of downloading these kinds of programs used to be provided with the terminal OS increases.
But, if this execution program is also downloaded in one file to the mobile communication terminal, in case of downloading small size patch files or extension packs including lots of components that are already included in the basic pack, there are still shortcomings that whole content has to be downloaded.
In addition, content for the mobile communication terminal has been provided in one file, and this file was stored in the predetermined address region in memory of the mobile communication terminal as one file without any specific directory.
Recently, it becomes possible to provide large size content due to the increased performance of the mobile communication terminal and increased memory capacity, however, large size content is still provided to the mobile communication terminal in one file and stored in the predetermined storage region without designating any specific directory.
It is possible there are various patch files if the size of content becomes larger, however, whole content had to be downloaded for the small size patch file, and accordingly, the mobile communication terminal must reserve large size of memory volume when downloading content.
Also, no extension pack was provided for large size content that was already installed on the mobile communication terminal, or even if there was an extension pack, this was recognized as a different file because content was organized in one file, so that the memory volume was limited because the extension pack was stored in another storage region different from the region where the basic pack was stored.